Project Positive Attitudes Towards Health, Michigan, 2017

Project Positive Attitudes Towards Health (PATH) was a survey conducted as a part of a larger study, "Empirical Assessment of Respondent Driven Sampling from Total Survey Error Perspectives," supported by the National Science Foundation. The larger study aims to examine operational as well as inferential properties of respondent driven sampling (RDS). The Project PATH was an application of RDS specific to the in-person environment targeting persons who inject drugs (PWID), a group associated with illicit and stigmatized behaviors and, hence, difficult to recruit in Southeast Michigan, which included Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and St. Clair counties. The Project PATH started in May 2017 and continued until the first week of November 2017 with a total sample size of 410 for the main survey. Questions in the main survey were largely adopted from the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health conducted by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and covered topics such as general health, mental health, illicit drug use, health risk behaviors, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, sexual orientation, health care service utilization and as well as socio-demographics. Questions specific to the interest of the local stakeholders were developed; these included topics related to Hepatitis A and access to naloxone. Demographic variables include gender, race, marital status, education level, age, and employment status.